Man, am I ever glad my mother wasn’t batshit crazy religious like that when I was growing up.  I used to get really bad nightmares, sleepwalk, and the worst was the night terrors.

One particularly bad episode I had I woke up everyone in the house screaming in the bathroom, clapping my hands above my head.  Apparently I thought that someone had cut off my head and I was trying to find it, but it apparently wasn’t on my neck any longer.  All I remember is getting shaken awake in the bathroom. 

I would apparently often get out of bed and go into the living room and watch television with the adults, and I also remember waking up outside on the picnic table several times, staring up at the full moon. I also woke up in this state in the car several times as well (the strangest part about that was the parents always locked their cars and I never remember having the keys...maybe the Devil magicked me there!). I’m guessing that this nutjob would have killed me too.

My question to her though would be, did ya ever think about...oh I don’t know, locking the kid’s door?  Maybe consulting a doctor, or even a fucking priest (who would hopefully recognize the normal sleepwalking/dreaming thing for what it is...ok, maybe just consulting a doctor)? Being nutso religious, you think she would have at the least consulted with a priest or pastor or whoever runs her church.  Even though exorcisms are bullshit, and often are dangerous, one of those might be slightly more healthy than stabbing the kid.

I noticed that the article accused the 25-year-old perpetrator of being a “mother.” Somehow the actions of that woman do not conjure up in me a picture of a mother. Am I missing something, here? Have you ever tried to get between a mother bear and her cub? Perhaps such a position would be a good learning experience for this woman. I would vote for that! 

I can hear the apologists already:  “Yeah, but the mother wasn’t really religious.  If she’d really been religious, she wouldn’t have done that.”

Probably ought to keep an eye on that mother.  “No True Crazy-person...”

Actually, the mother is just more devout than most other True Believers™…

This just confirms one of my biases. The more religiously devout people are, the more I suspect them to be batshit crazy, too. The only question in each individual case is whether religion pushed them over the edge or are their religious beliefs a symptom of their pathology.

Waukeegan, eh. We used to live a couple of burbs south of it…

But isn’t blaming her religion, or her faith, on this killing a little bit like saying that video games caused the school shootings, or that video games cause an increase in real world violence?  I’ve known a lot of people who are very religious, very firm I their faith, real holy roller, bible thumping kinda folk, but they were never closer to brutally murdering their sleepwalking daughter than I am to go out and carjack a police car and then run over prostitutes.

But isn’t blaming her religion, or her faith, on this killing a little bit like saying that video games caused the school shootings, or that video games cause an increase in real world violence?

Yeah, pretty much.  In college I knew a guy who played D&D;obsessively.  He went kind of nuts, tore up his apartment, his girlfriend’s apartment, assaulted his girlfriend.  Some people are just obsessive-nutso.  Whatever they’re really into is the grist for their obsession.  Lot of people are into religion, some of them are violent.

But isn’t blaming her religion, or her faith, on this killing a little bit like saying that video games caused the school shootings, or that video games cause an increase in real world violence?

Probably. But wouldn’t you also say that violent video games are probably not suitable for people who have trouble distinguishing reality from fiction? It’s not that religious belief is a sufficient condition for insanity, but it certainly doesn’t help people who are royally screwed up. Like violent video games, religion isn’t really the problem, but neither should it be an excuse for bad parenting or psychological problems.

But isn’t blaming her religion, or her faith, on this killing a little bit like saying that video games caused the school shootings, or that video games cause an increase in real world violence?  I’ve known a lot of people who are very religious, very firm I their faith, real holy roller, bible thumping kinda folk, but they were never closer to brutally murdering their sleepwalking daughter than I am to go out and carjack a police car and then run over prostitutes.

This makes me wonder why someone hasn’t come out and collected the statistics on deaths blamed on video games vs. deaths blamed on religion.  If someone has feel free to point me to the statistics, I’d definitely be interested in seeing them.

But isn’t blaming her religion, or her faith, on this killing a little bit like saying that video games caused the school shootings, or that video games cause an increase in real world violence?

Not really.

Unless you have a serious mental health issue to begin with, you wouldn’t confuse a violent video game with reality. As a rule, frag-happy gamers don’t go on real-life shooting sprees.

Religion on the other hand encourages you to accept things that just ain’t so as real, which opens the door to an insidious vicious circle if you’re not mentally stable and firmly grounded in reality. There have been quite a few reported murders in the recent past where religion was a prominent feature. It doesn’t necessarily follow that religion is the direct cause, but the correlation is there.

I can only conclude that too much religion can be harmful to your mental health. And I’m unabashed about a personal bias—I’ve always been uneasy when I was around overly devout True Believers™, because they don’t seem quite right (in their heads) to me.

Elwed beat me to it. Most video games don’t encourage you to accept them as reality or to act the same way in real life that you do in the game. Most religions insist that they are reality and provide rules and guidelines that most believers tend to overlook because they would be abhorrent if actually put into practice.

Jeff:

But isn’t blaming her religion, or her faith, on this killing a little bit like saying that video games caused the school shootings, or that video games cause an increase in real world violence?  I’ve known a lot of people who are very religious, very firm I their faith, real holy roller, bible thumping kinda folk, but they were never closer to brutally murdering their sleepwalking daughter than I am to go out and carjack a police car and then run over prostitutes.

How many people have been killed in the name of some religion or other? Centuries of pogroms, the Crusades, Hitler’s “solution,” etc, etc. How many people have been killed in the name of some game or other? I don’t know, maybe one of these is more virulent than the other. Maybe . . . 

A fanatic isn’t someone looking to kill or maim you for a cause. A fanatic is someone LOOKING for a cause to kill or maim you for.

Video games or Religion can’t be held accountable for an individual’s actions. They only provide a context to which a person may take action. But the responsibility lies with that person and his/her mental state.

Video games or Religion can’t be held accountable for an individual’s actions. They only provide a context to which a person may take action. But the responsibility lies with that person and his/her mental state.

That’s not strictly true.

As pointed out before, the crucial difference is that almost every gamer knows the difference between playing a game and acting it out in real life and thus the causal link between gaming and acts of violence is tenuous at best. Religion, on the other hand, claims to represent reality and comes complete with superstition, the demand for active or passive aggression against non-conformists, and the cop-out that violence committed in the name of religion is divinely sanctioned. In this case, the causal link can be much stronger.

Gamers know they play a game, but the overly religious reject the idea that they are play-acting, as well.

There certainly is individual accountability, but the desert religions in particular are paragons of hypocrisy by emphasizing personal responsibility where it suits them and playing the “Will of the Skydaddy” card when it doesn’t.

If the intelligent Gamer knows he is playing a game, then the intelligent religious practitioner knows the boundaries of his/her faith, regardless of the interpreter. These level-headed people are not part of this discussion.

It’s the people who don’t know the line between the two that we’re concerned about, and you’ll find these people in all sorts of communities and contexts (religion, gaming, activism, environmental activism, politics, etc.).

These communities provide the forum for the person to act out their dementia, but it’s not the cause. The problem lies inside the person and the context is only the vehicle.

If you see a crazy person painting a portrait and suddenly realize that the paint is really human blood, do you blame the act of Painting as the force that pushed him over the edge?

Hobbes, no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.

Hobbes, the “intelligent religious practitioner” as you call them do not know those boundaries because of their faith! It’s rather boundaries of civilized society that holds them back from going over the deep end. Look in the bible itself and there aren’t built in “sanity restraints”. If they were to really follow what is written in the Bible, there are all manners of wretched things that may be construed as “divinely sanctioned” that flies in the face of modern sanity!

Do you see what we’re trying to say? Grand Theft Auto or other types of games don’t flash the words of “Go do this killing out on the streets in the real world!"… Whereas the Bible lists all sorts of commands and messages about how one should kill others for a variety of offenses!

Do you see what we’re trying to say?

To make it as succinct as possible, religion is like a particularly powerful drug that can remove inhibitions. Some people tolerate it better than others. As opposed to booze, say, religious scripture does put ideas into receptive heads.

You will find unbalanced people in nearly all walks of life, but religion is the most insidious way to push them over the edge.

Video games or Religion can’t be held accountable for an individual’s actions. They only provide a context to which a person may take action. But the responsibility lies with that person and his/her mental state.

The main difference being peer groups, I think.  We currently have a President who thinks that he talks to God.  ‘Nuff said.  As Shakespeare’s Isabella put it; “Thieves for their pilfering have authority when judges steal.” Mental illness is mental illness, no matter what obsessions it focuses on.  But religion is given a free pass in this society, which I think stands in the way of more people getting help sooner than they do.

well.........with all due respect to everyone, I don’t believe religion has anything to do with this tragedy. The woman was insane, period, and she needed help but didn’t want or get any.

Yes, a lot of horrible things have happened over the years in the name of religion, because people of different religions disagreed, and were horrendously misguided in how they dealt with those disagreements.

I had more to say..........but I forgot it. It’s very late, that’s probably why.

Athena of athenivanidx

Yeah, that’s pretty much the response we expect from folks who don’t want to accept the idea that this woman’s religious beliefs may have had an impact on her judgment.

You don’t have to be insane to kill someone. All you have to do is believe that your mortal soul is in peril. This woman obviously believed that to be the case as a result of her religious attitude. How is this any different than the various people who have been “accidentally” killed during so-called exorcisms over the years?

I don’t believe religion has anything to do with this tragedy.

With all due respect, you are clearly wrong:

A young mother has confessed to brutally slashing her daughter to death because she believed the child — who had a history of sleepwalking — was possessed by the devil, authorities in Illinois said this week.

Let me rephrase that:

she believed the child...was possessed by the devil

Insane she might have been, but the point is, she had religious beliefs that she acted on.  Whether she was insane or not, the key is she believed the child was possessed by the DEVIL. 

dev·il /ˈdɛvəl/ –noun
1.  Theology.
a. (sometimes initial capital letter) the supreme spirit of evil; Satan.
b. a subordinate evil spirit at enmity with God, and having power to afflict humans both with bodily disease and with spiritual corruption.

You may have heard of this Devil character, he gets mentioned a lot in the Bible (especially the New Testament).  He’s supposedly the former right hand man of God, and he’s so dumb he rebelled against the all powerful creator of the universe.  However, he’s really supposedly screwing stuff up for some reason, and you know, gets blamed for pretty much all the bad stuff that happens in people’s lives.  Kinda a scapegoat for Christians so they don’t have to take responsibility for their own evils.  Throw in magic Get out of Hell Free Jesus to the mix, and Christians can literally get away with murder in the Biblical world. (Good thing here in the real world we have laws not based off the Bible).

Whew, I went through that whole thing without a single swear word.  FUCK! PISS! ASS! SHIT!

To repeat myself:

No true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.

With all due respect, Athena, have you ever lived in Mexico or Brazil for any length of time? Are you aware that for the vast majority of people living in those cultures the Roman Catholic Church has instilled in their minds that both God and the Devil are real? And you’re trying to tell us that “religion” has nothing to do with it? Have you ever served on a jury?

@Bog Brother

If I remember correctly the Devil isn’t mentioned in the OT, and not all that much in the NT; I believe his greatest role is in the temptation of Jesus.

And the idea of him being a powerful fallen angel comes from Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, not the Bible.

A lot of people see Satan in the Fall of Man, but again, no real mention of him there, just the serpent.